


Uptown Funk You Up

by cheydinhal



Series: Combustibles [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (sort of), Alpha Armitage Hux, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Stripper/Exotic Dancer, Blood and Gore, Dangerous Men in Lust, Depictions of Murder, Low-Key Blood Kink, M/M, Murder, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Kylo Ren, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Wholesome Bloodstained Considerations Made Over a Corpse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 10:47:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16135658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheydinhal/pseuds/cheydinhal
Summary: He was a dancer, he was awhore, and now Hux would know that Kylo was capable of being so much more than that.  He would be Kylo's judge, jury, and potential executioner, all wrapped up in the body of one hoodwinked man.





	Uptown Funk You Up

**Author's Note:**

> By surprisingly popular demand, another fic for the mob a/b/o AU I never thought I'd write! This one is a prequel to [Awareness Spectrum Narcotic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15845082), which takes place some years after the events depicted herein, so you don't have to read ASN to understand it, though I'd recommend it since ASN is way better than this. That said, I'm not super pleased with how this particular fic came out, mostly because oh god I don't want to disappoint anyone here (the feedback to ASN having been unexpectedly amazing--I never thought so many people would be interested in this AU), but I have fussed with it and scrapped and re-written it so much that at this point I just have to accept that it's time to let it go. Fly, my weirdly stylized child, with a title I absolutely did not swipe from my growing EDM playlist.
> 
> A quick biology note taken from ASN, since it doesn't come up in this fic: in my version of A/B/O, male omegas have vaginas and cocks; however, they don’t have balls, because why would they need them? Also, when relevant, I refer to Kylo’s vagina as a cunt, so if that’s not your cup of tea, well, you’re an adult; you know what to do. Enjoy.

The first time Kylo had felt the warm splatter of blood on his face, he’d been reacting in self-defence.  Now, as he breathed through his nose and stared at the body of the woman laying sprawled and broken on Hux’s otherwise pristine floor, he wondered if he could still claim that same excuse, or if the feeling of blood soaking through his clothes—into his skin—would once more sending him packing and hoping against hope that there was something below the underworld where the First Order operated.

He doubted it, though.  Rock bottom had been his starting point in this city, after all, and without money to leave the country and disappear, there wasn’t anywhere he could run to where Hux and his people would not eventually find him.  Perhaps that was why he remained, standing hunched and smarting over the corpse of his prey, and why, when Hux eventually let himself into the decoy flat at an unknown hour, Kylo merely inclined his head and waited, watching with parted lips as Hux slowly set his briefcase down and approached, ice-cold eyes flicking from the fallen omega to the victorious.

Hux didn’t ask who she was.  Why would he, Kylo thought with just a touch of heat, when he had fucked her just the other night, drawn in by a new face on the stage, by a new body to command?  She was a whore, just like the others, just like _Kylo_ , and Hux had had her, and in return, she would have had his life.

There had been undercover cops sent to First Order-operated clubs before, omegas and the occasional svelte beta whom detractors thought could produce enough evidence to bring the shadowy crime ring crumbling down.  Some had been allowed to linger, fed false data once their identities were discovered, and others had been summarily disposed of in one way or another, or else forced to retreat after their efforts uncovered nothing or worth.

She wasn’t a cop, not like the others, but Kylo had still pegged her as _other,_ as _danger_ , the instant he laid eyes on her under _Finalizer’s_ erratic strobes.  It was in the way she moved, the slight curl of her lips whenever she was forced to interact with the other dancers and whores; the way her eyes would flicker with a mix of pity and distaste, as if she could not fathom why anyone would debase themselves onstage for the viewing pleasure of the city’s underground elite.  It was the condescension and the lack of understanding she could not hide from Kylo when he had bluntly told her he danced for his own pleasure, for the control it gave him, and it was the way she constantly tried too hard, her efforts nearly invisible to all but Kylo, who had begun to keep an eye on her the moment he saw Hux watching her on the stage the way he’d once watched Kylo during the alpha’s now semi-frequent visits to _Finalizer._

It was all these things, all these little details, but ultimately what gave her away, what cracked her perfectly constructed lie wide open for him, was the fire in her eyes that Kylo recognized as stemming from seeing something she believed to be corrupt and unjust and wanting to fix it, unwilling to recognize and understand that to some, the First Order was the only type of reprieve, the only type of _justice,_ that they could get.  Kylo had grown up seeing that look reflected in eyes that were both his own and not, and he knew all too well the blindness that came with that sort of passion, that sort of belief.  The willingness to fight a corrupt system in the name of another corrupt system had destroyed the creature he had been before _Finalizer_ , before the First Order, and it was why Kylo knew that morals were best suited to those in a position privileged enough to afford them. This girl, this omega, wanted to fight the universe, and she had come here, to the underworld, playing at being something she was not in order to do so.  She masked her lies with half-truths and her truths with lies, tried to duck her head and play the simple whore, the shy dancer, but the fire blazed too bright, and Kylo _saw._ She was an omega, and she was a weapon, and Kylo, who had only ever been a tool for those around him, had recognized her as _like_ in that sense the moment she’d been introduced by the beta woman who ran _Finalizer_ in Hux’s name.

He hadn't considered even for a moment that she might recognize him, too, in those final moments.

Now she was dead, and Kylo, who had his own secrets to keep, his own past to bury in the name of being someone new, someone  _safer_ , could not bring himself to regret his actions, not when they had protected so much, not when the cost of her silence and Hux's safety—irresponsible of him, really, to care about that beyond the professional, yet he could not pretend he did not—was a price he knew he could pay, even if he could not erase records of the transaction.

He was a dancer, he was a  _whore_ , and now Hux would know that Kylo was capable of being so much more than that _._ He would be Kylo's judge, jury, and potential executioner, all wrapped up in the body of one hoodwinked man.

It was why, when Hux drew close enough to see the blood staining Kylo’s chin, his hands, the ends of his loosened hair, Kylo’s only action was to lift his hand and uncurl his fingers from the fist he had unconsciously made, revealing a bloody badge and the omega’s true allegiances, so much worse than a cop, so much more dangerous for what she had almost managed to accomplish.  It was his evidence, his trump card, and Hux, whose eye for fine details had allowed him to build an organization Kylo only toed the line of, could not ignore it.

Hux’s face tightened, and before Kylo could even blink there was a hand in his hair, forcing him to his knees, the stinging pain radiating from his scalp ensuring a quick compliance, and a silent one, as the offending badge dropped to the polished wood with a loud clatter that echoed in the otherwise still room.

“You’ve made a mess of my floor, Ren,” Hux said, but beneath the cold words lay an undercurrent of anger directed at nobody but himself, and when Kylo lifted his head to meet Hux’s eyes he saw the same anger reflected in their icy depths, humiliation warring with disgust and fury at the fact that he had allowed himself to be fooled, and that someone else had witnessed, in a roundabout way, his mistake; his failure.

His complacency.

It was that thought that made Kylo’s mouth curl into an unbidden smile, despite Hux's awaiting judgement.  After all, Kylo knew more than anyone the power that came with being an attractive omega, the way alphas could not look away while also simultaneously dismissing anything beyond the appearance of whatever creature had taken their fancy.  Kylo knew it, actively  _exploited_ the way alphas became complacent in his presence, their guard down, but he had never let the knowledge of his own power blind him the way alphas and even other omegas did, the way Hux had. Everyone in the underworld had the potential to be dangerous. This woman was not the first body Kylo had left in his wake, nor was her blood the first that Kylo had spilt out of necessity.

And he was sure that, had this woman succeeded in her attempt to kill Hux, it wouldn’t have been the first time she tasted blood, either.  It was time Hux knew that, too.

Kylo felt little pity for Hux, though.  It was a rude wakeup call, but one he desperately needed, and a valuable lesson—two omegas, revealed not to be just simpering whores but dangerous in their own rights.  Had Kylo not been present, had Hux not just earlier given him a temporary key and told Kylo to wait for him at the flat he had fucked Kylo in several times before, well.

There was a part of Kylo that, more than anything, seethed at the idea that this woman could have murdered Hux, an ignoble end to a man who measured power and control by how many people feared and hated him when he walked into a room.  It was primal, deep, and when Hux’s hand tightened in his hair, lifting his head until their eyes met, he thought he saw an echo of his own sentiments in Hux’s eyes, eyes that had always looked upon him with lust and a vague sense of amusement but that had now sharpened with a new, considering light, as though he were seeing Kylo for the first time; as though he had not been regularly fucking Kylo for months, something that had already been out of character for the man if the cautious First Order grapevine could be believed.

Then, with more care than Hux had ever shown him, the hand in Kylo's hair loosened, slender fingers coming to rest under Kylo’s chin with a softness that, perhaps, was an extension of the consideration that Kylo could still feel in Hux’s steady, unwavering gaze.

Something had changed, shifted, and Kylo saw the moment Hux reached whatever decision, whatever _judgement_  he had been meticulously debating in his head, lifting Kylo to his feet with the hand under his chin, not a demand for once but a suggestion. Kylo rose willingly, and when Hux’s hands came to cup his face fully, lilywhite skin stained red by the blood on Kylo’s face, Kylo allowed the touch, leaning into it and letting his eyes flutter closed as Hux hummed.

“Brilliant boy,” he murmured, leaning forward to claim Kylo’s lips in a kiss that was devastating for its softness, as though Hux had just discovered a great treasure and could not bear to break it.  At their feet, the body of the omega woman grew cold, but Kylo ignored her, willingly lost in the feeling of Hux’s mouth on his, humming as Hux’s hands skimmed down to his blood-soaked clothes, grasping lightly at the stained and torn fabric and dipping under one of the tears to press at a wound the omega woman had left behind, something that made Kylo hiss as pain flared up the length of his arm, curling around the collarbone where the woman’s knife had slashed as she struggled desperately for her life in a battle she had not been prepared to fight.

“A shame about the jacket,” Hux said, stepping back, his eyes raking up and down Kylo’s bloodied frame.  “But you wear death so well, darling.”

Later, Hux would take him to bed, fuck him long and hard and _deep_ , and Kylo would curl against his side and whisper of how he had walked in and found her, and how he had watched the light dim in the woman’s eyes as he’d wrapped his hands around her neck and _squeezed,_ ignoring the way her blade flailed and occasionally slashed his own skin until he’d heard a sickening _pop_ and her struggles ceased.  He would whisper about watching her at _Finalizer_ , but he would not allude to the events in his own life that allowed him to know what to look for in people like her, nor would he tell Hux that, once upon a time, he had been surrounded by people much like this girl, this woman, who had for a brief moment seen beneath Kylo's own mask and who now lay cold and dead on the wooden floor in the other room—a job for tomorrow’s clean-up crew.  It was enough for now that he had murdered ostensibly purely for Hux, and done so gladly, and if Hux’s teeth grazed his neck more roughly than usual, if his sharp voice softened around the occasional endearment, testing new waters that both were content to leave unnamed and simmering for the moment, Kylo was happy to let these actions pass unremarked.

For now.

Still, just as he was about to drift off into sleep, his head pillowed on a sinewy chest and the smell of nicotine drifting in the air, he felt Hux’s fingers tangle in his hair again, and heard Hux ask in a low, pondering voice:

“How would you like a change of venue, Ren?”

Kylo lifted his head.  “What did you have in mind?”

**Author's Note:**

> After this I'm going to challenge my hated enemy Charles Dickens and steal from him the title of "world's longest sentence creator."
> 
> Due to popular demand (and the amazing feedback to ASN), I will also be adding a couple more fics to this AU, so if you're interested in seeing more, or if you want to see something specific, please let me know here or [on tumblr](http://tarisians.tumblr.com/)! This whole AU started as a request on good ol' tungle dot com so if your request fits the general narrative I have in my head, I'd be more than willing to try and deliver c; When I wrote ASN I never intended to actually write more for this series, but your guys' feedback prompted me to (happily) add to it, so if you want more, or if you enjoyed this fic, I'd love to hear from you!


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